Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Time for a New Global Leader?

In a twist of fate, Russia is now emerging as a country that is ready and willing to resume the responsibilities of global leadership. In recent weeks, the Russian leadership has increasingly come to recognize its dependence on the world economy. The global financial crisis has had an impact on the Russian economy, with the Russian stock market losing more than 60 percent of its value since last May. Is President Dmitry Medvedev showing global statesmanship? Is Russia trying to position itself as a responsible global player that has the ideas and the will to lead?
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Dear Barack

As the American presidential election nears and the two candidates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, intensify their campaigns, the debate as to whether Russians would prefer to see a democrat or a republican in the White House swirls on. In the opinion of our columnist Vladimir Frolov, the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would rather deal with the former. Frolov supports his line of reasoning with an imaginary letter.
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It Is no Longer Possible to Reintegrate South Ossetia and Abkhazia with Georgia

This week Russian forces are withdrawing from the buffer zones they established around South Ossetia and Abkhazia following the five-day war, and EU observers are arriving to preserve peace. But a final settlement of the conflicts in the Caucasus will be long in coming, and will require a dramatic rethinking of European and East-West relations
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Russia Attempts to Prove that It Can Still Collaborate with NATO and the EU

As exotic and irrelevant as it may appear in the contemporary context, the very real piracy that presently exists as one of the most profitable businesses in Somalia had so far been drawing little attention from the media. But all this changed recently, when a Ukrainian ship carrying military cargo was captured and held for ransom there. The story then developed according to an unpredictable scheme, when it became the setting for Russia’s first major attempt to come back to the international stage in its newly-assumed status of a major global power.
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Another Attempt at Resuscitating Democracy

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and billionaire banker Alexander Lebedev have announced the formation of a new opposition party. Its organizers say the new party, to be called the Independent Democratic Party of Russia, will run on a social democratic platform and make its debut in the 2011 Duma elections.
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Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko’s Political Ship Is Sinking

When Russian forces destroyed Georgia’s army and sank its Western-donated navy during a five-day-long war in August in order to protect South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Mikheil Saakashvili’s suicidal policies, many in the West argued that this would send a signal throughout the post-Soviet space that the former Soviet bloc countries should seek NATO’s protection from Russia’s aggressive policies. However, the actual message that politicians in states like Azerbaijan and Moldova are deciphering is antithetical.
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Ingush NGOs’ Critique of Russia’s Actions Is Indicative of Dangerous Tendencies in the Greater North Caucasus

On Sunday, a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev signed by the leaders of 13 non-government organizations (NGOs) from the autonomous republic of Ingushetia was published on the Internet and broadcast by the Moscow-based Ekho Moskvy radio station. The letter dismisses Moscow’s policy in neighboring South Ossetia, a separatist region of Georgia that Russia recognized as an independent state in August this year, after a brief armed conflict with Georgia. In fact, this letter was one of the first organized public protests against Russia’s campaign in South Ossetia.
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Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Immunizing Russia from U.S. Economic Contagion

Last week, Russian leaders took sweeping measures to insulate the Russian economy from the financial contagion that is now sucking the United States into an economic black hole. Will Russia manage to steer clear of the U.S.-led financial meltdown? Is investing government money into the Russian stock market a good idea? Will the crisis reshape the international economic system in favor of Russia?
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Yamadaev’s Gangster-Style Murder a Show of the Ongoing Power Struggle in Chechnya

The recent murder in the center of Moscow of Ruslan Yamadayev, an influential Chechen warlord turned colonel of the Russian army, marks an important threshold for Chechnya. Yamadayev, 46, was the head of an influential clan seen as one of the very few remaining challenges to the virtually unbound power of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s controversial president.
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Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: A New Arms Race?

President Dmitry Medvedev announced last Thursday that Moscow would spend billions of dollars on purchasing new weapons, space and CI4 systems to make the Russian military a modern fighting force. Medvedev made it clear that this would be in response to the United States arming of Georgia. Medvedev also said that Russia would use force anywhere its citizens’ lives are in danger. At the same time, both Vladimir Putin and Medvedev sent out signals to the West that indicate Russia’s willingness to engage constructively on strategic issues. Is Moscow indicating its readiness to engage the West in a new arms race or in a new round of cooperation?
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